Weekend Adventures

This weekend was full of adventure. First, on Saturday, Bobby (Ryan's dad) and I ran a 5K at Oak Mountain State Park. It was pouring rain the whole time and the trails were muddy and slippery, but it was a fun run.

Here we are right before the race.

Here comes Bobby across the finish line!


All done..and all wet and muddy!

Since it rained for two whole days, the river was running pretty fast, so Ryan had the great idea to take on the rapids. Well, we tipped over within the first 30 minutes and it took us 30 minutes to get back on dry land without losing our kayaks to the river! We did lose our shoes to the river. We are bruised and sore, but still in one piece!

Here we are getting ready to head out.

Here we are after two hours and the loss of two pairs of shoes. Fun Times!

-Melissa

Bradford Pear Suffocation

Well, it's spring...at least the Bradford Pear trees say so. They are in bloom full force here, and almost every yard in our subdivision of 1200 or so homes has at least one of the fluffy, mushroom-shaped trees in the front yard. It's a beautiful site to see, although it does sometimes make me think I'm trapped in the Mario Brothers original Nintendo games...you remember those weird white trees, don't lie.

Now, it may be a site to see, but it makes me wonder how something so pretty can be so darn stinky. Haven't noticed their foul odor? Try going for a run through a neighborhood full of them. You start off unable to breathe because of the horrible smell, but due to the massive amount of pollen they release in the air, by the end of the run you'll be so stopped up that you can't smell anything...I guess that's Nature's way of balancing things out.

-Melissa

Snow!?!

As most of you probably heard on the news, the deep South was blanketed in snow on Sunday. We had 3-4 inches in areas around Birmingham, and all of the snow fell between about 6 am until noon. The pictures may seem unimpressive, but this type of thing doesn't happen around here very often...They even had snow as far south as Dothan. If you look on a map, that's getting pretty close to the coast! The white stuff didn't stick around for long. The sun came out at about 1 pm and by 3 you would have never known it ever happened! I was at work and Ryan snapped these pictures mid-morning. We had still had a couple hours of hard snow after these were taken, but it all melted and dried up by the time I got home!